The number of similarities and differences between popular programming languages can be close or vast depending on the two being compared. Nonetheless, developers love to see how they stack up against their competition. When a programming language is popular, however, there are usually valid reasons for that. Most of them include the benefits of using the language, the flexibility of it, or sometimes simply just that it’s better than another language.
Let’s look at two popular programming languages and do a big comparison of them.
Golang
Commonly called Go, this programming language is open-sourced, easy to learn, compiled, and has a great performance speed. Go is also very adaptable and has a concurrent system. Additionally, it’s used across various platforms, as well as containing analytical tools.
Go does have some disadvantages such as its struggle with memory management, appearing too easy or almost not worth learning to some developers, and limited supportive resources since it’s still considered a relatively young language.
Rust
Like Go, Rust is concurrent, which is a significant benefit. It is, on the other hand, much better at handling memory than its competitor. A good run time, easy integration capabilities, and a unique ownership feature are other advantages to using Rust.
Its disadvantages, however, contain issues with syntax, a growing difficulty in learning how to use it and its data compiling ability, and its foundation in the scope-based management of memory leads to a leak of recursion with that memory.
Commonalities Between the Two
As mentioned with Go, it’s a concurrent language just like Rust. Both of them are also cross-platform compatible, young, and popular with younger programmers.
And the Differences…
- Performance
Rust is a little more efficient than Go in this category due to the latter having a slightly slower development speed.
- Concurrency
While both handle concurrency well, Go has been compatible since its release. Rust received its compatibility later on and doesn’t have as much developer expertise. However, concurrency does help stabilize Rust’s memory functionality.
- Memory Management
Go has an automated memory management system, which means developers can’t do much manually if they needed to. That can be beneficial because it indicated developers don’t have to worry about it. Rust does have slight issues with memory management due to its scope-based system, but its compiling system helps make up for that.
Summary
Overall, Rust has a steeper learning curve than Go and does focus more on data security. Go is also more scalable and more popular than Rust. Still, both were introduced around the same time. They are picking up speed in terms of development, updates, and popularity. Rust trails behind a little yet the two are considered rivals in the tech industry. With the shift in attention to a speedy yet efficient society, Go tends to be favored as well as slightly more cost-effective than Rust.
At the core of every development project, there are the back-end tools and software that apps are built on. This includes programming languages like Go and Rust. That makes choosing the right one incredibly important.